


The Chelsea Ladies College Wraith

by Megkips



Category: Lockwood & Co. - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Case Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 04:44:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5443742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megkips/pseuds/Megkips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following the events at Combe Carey Hall, Lockwood and Company accept a new case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Chelsea Ladies College Wraith

**Author's Note:**

  * For [novembersmith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/novembersmith/gifts).



In the immediate aftermath of the incident at Combe Carey Hall, Lockwood and Co. became overwhelmed with an abundance with cases, seemingly overnight. The publicity the events at the hall brought us was staggering, but it was nothing compared to the sense of accomplishment we all shared regarding solving Annie Ward’s murder. Of course the abundance of cases also meant we got to pick and choose from a whole host of what Lockwood would call the good stuff - the stuff that got written about as major cases with Visitors whose names would be capitalized based on where they hailed from and what sort of Type they were.

The Chelsea Ladies College Wraith is such an example, and while it ended up being a pretty easy case to take care of, I can’t say it was one of my favourite investigations. Not because of the wraith’s appearance - I mean, if I got scared by limbless apparitions I wouldn’t be a good agent - but because of where that Visitor chose to appear.

 

Chelsea has been and always will be one of the poshest places in London, which itself was already a striking contrast from where I grew up in northern England. Called a village of palaces in the 1600s, Chelsea cemented that reputation by having a private road for the King. During the 19th century people like Oscar Wilde lived there, and there was never any indication that this reputation would change, even when the Problem began back in the 1950s.

As soon as reports on how to stay safe began to trickle out, Chelsea began to fortify itself. The district shelled out huge amounts of money for iron doors, some of the first ghost lamps, and imported lavender from the south of France, quickly ensuring that the residents of the area could stay safe in their little enclave. That level of security in a city where more and more Visitors show up all the time has made Chelsea a prime location for those who want to hold sealed-off parties during the night, imagining the ghosts that lurk just beyond the iron lines. 

Needless to say, not my favourite place in London. All the prestige of being an agent couldn’t hide the fact that I, in my skirt and leggings and bulky winter coat, wasn’t born into the wealthy world that the regular inhabitants of Chelsea were. Lockwood managed to pull it off simply with his suit and long coat, and well, George in his puffy jacket at least seemed to blend in. 

Walking past the gates (iron, of course) onto the campus of Chelsea Ladies College intensified the differences for me. George had insisted on doing all the background research he could, and briefed us before heading over.

“The college was founded in 1853, and it serves as a sixth-form college presently,” he had said as Lockwood and I sat at the kitchen table. We all had our hands wrapped around teacups, as the heating unit in the house had decided to go a little wonky the night before and the repairman couldn’t make it until tomorrow. “It has boarding students and day students, all of whom are eleven to eighteen years old.”

“So this report of a limbless Visitor can absolutely be verified,” Lockwood said, sounding quite pleased. “Most of the students are the right age for a clear vision.”

“Yes,” George confirmed. “ _Anyway_ , the college is one of those very expensive prestigious sorts with rich families sending their daughters there in expectation that they’ll get a very high quality education.”

I made a snort at that. “So they hired us because we’re good enough, but not a massive agency that’d draw attention?”

“Yes. And to be fair, it’s the first Visitor that they’ve had on grounds since the school put its first lines of protection in place back when the Problem began.”

“So something’s changed on school grounds or in the nearby area making it possible for a Visitor to appear in what is a well defended area,” Lockwood finished neatly. “Do you know what yet?”

“No, not yet,” George replied. “It looks like the college has its own archive though, so I don’t think finding information will be a problem. We’re due at the front of the main building today at three.”

Which brought us to now as we approached a set of stairs leading up to a building that on the left was all white with some decoration on the windows, and to the right was that sort of faux-medieval front that places like to use in order to make themselves look important. There were iron strips lining the street and lining the edge of each step. The three of us went up the steps in silence, rapiers hanging at our sides and belts heavy with equipment, unsure of what to expect once we stepped inside.

What we were greeted with was a large atrium with students milling about here and there, all in their uniforms of skirts, button up-shirts, ties, and fuzzy jumpers, plus a single adult woman waiting off to the side of the entrance. Our contact. She waved over towards Lockwood, and it was clear from her imposing figure that she was someone of standing within the college itself. She wore black shoes that shined to the point of nearly being blinding, a slimming green dress with a dark green damask pattern, and her brown hair was swept up into a tight, severe bun. Her nose was perfectly pert, and her glasses perched on the tip of her nose. There was a coldness to the green of the woman’s eyes as we approached that she saw the three of us as clear contrasts to the elite educational world she occupied, and if I could I would have turned and left right there and then. But it was too late for that, because Lockwood had already extended a hand and said, “Hello, Miss Parsingwol. I apologise that we’re running a bit behind. There was a matter on the underground that delayed us.”

“Perfectly understandable,” Miss Parsingwol replied, her accent unbelievably posh. “If you three would please follow me so that we might talk in private?”

Without waiting for a response, Miss Parsingwol turned on her heel and began to lead us down a vaulted corridor. Her heels clicked on the black and white tile floor while the rest of us shuffled after her, weighed down by equipment. Only Lockwood could really keep pace, and the corridor Parsingwol led us down soon grew thin with students. The names on the doors we past all said things like _secretary_ or _vice-president_ , until we entered Miss Parsingwol’s office.

The place was immaculately clean, and about double the size of my bedroom back at 35 Portland Row. All the furniture was made from dark wood, ranging from the massive desk piled with neat stacks to the bookshelves that dominated the room. Even the furniture used for meetings matched, three plush armchairs plus a sofa with massive wooden legs, and it was there on that dark green fabric that we were lead to. Miss Parsingwol was the last of us to sit - she insisted on closing the door first - and she gave us all appraising looks. Our reputations in the papers really did make us seem more impressive than we looked, but then that was always to our advantage.

“Thank you for coming to Chelsea Ladies College so quickly Mr Lockwood,” Miss Parsingwol began. “Am I correct in assuming these are your associates?”

Lockwood confirmed that with a smile. “Miss Lucy Carlyle and Mr George Cubbins.”

“A pleasure,” Miss Parsingwol said, taking each of our hands and shaking them in turn. “I know it is unusual for your agency to accept a case without your client coming to your home office first, so I appreciate the flexibility.”

“We usually don’t make such exceptions either,” Lockwood replied. “But your Visitor intrigued us so much that we felt we could make an amendment to our usual protocols.”

I held back a grumble at that, shifting a little on the sofa. 

Miss Parsingwol smiled tiredly. “It’s a blessing. I can’t tell you how angry the parents of our girls would be if they found out that despite all of the money invested in ensuring the safety of everyone on our campus, a Visitor still managed to manifest.”

“You said on the phone that the Visitor is appearing in girls’ bathroom in one of the dorms,” George said, finally speaking up. As much as George and I didn’t get on, I was glad he cut to business so quickly. “Could you tell us more about the haunting?”

“Yes, of course,” Miss Parsingwol said, sitting up a little bit straighter in the armchair opposite us. “We have ten boarding houses on our grounds, and each one of them has communal bathrooms on the second and third floors. A few nights ago in the Glanlan house, one of our students was showering on the second floor after hockey practice. She noticed that the room’s temperature was going down as she was bathing, and saw something out of the corner of her eye. This student was about eighteen so--”

“Not as clear a vision as you’d hope for,” Lockwood murmured under his breath.

“Precisely. The next night a few students decided to investigate what she saw on a dare, only to clearly see a limbless Visitor crawling from the furthest corner of the showers and towards them. They were able to get away, and they informed the Housemistress immediately. She passed word along to the appropriate authorities, and we quickly closed that entire floor of the house. A few students have snuck back in since, in spite of our best efforts to keep them out, and they’ve all reported the same thing: a limbless man shuffling across the bathroom floor on his bloody stumps. An emergency meeting of the governing bodies of the university was held, and it was agreed we would reach out to an agency that gets results but could work without raising the alarm of parents.”

“And so here we are,” Lockwood finished, all smiles. “Miss Parsingwol, we are absolutely prepared to take care of this Visitor for you. However, we will need a few things from you and your college.”

“Those would be?”

“Full and unmitigated access to the house, a chance to speak to the girls who saw the Visitor, and possibly two days in order to allow us to work.”

“And access to your archives,” George added helpfully. 

“Granted,” Miss Parsingwol said. “If you’ll wait here, I can ask those students to come to this office and give you their account in person.”

Lockwood nodded in agreement. “That would be lovely.”

“Please excuse me then,” Miss Parsingwol said, standing up from her chair and exiting the office as swiftly as she had lead us there. When the door shut behind her, Lockwood slumped into the back of his chair, looking quite bored.

“So, what do we all think?” he asked.

“Well, it’s pretty clear why there’s a haunting,” I said. “Whoever this Visitor is, they died a spectacularly violent death.”

“Obviously,” George drawled. “Do you want me around for the interviews, or should I head to the archives now and start working out the history of the area and what happened around the house?”

“Wait until Parsingwol’s back so she can walk you over there and give you a personal introduction to whoever’s in charge of the archives,” Lockwood said. “Luce, will you stick around with me for the interviews? Depending on how many people we have it might be best to split people up and get singular accounts.”

“Fine,” I said, barely hiding the fact I wanted nothing to do with any of the students here. “Are we going to investigate the house tonight?”

“I think so,” Lockwood said. “I’d like to get a read on the death glow at least, and maybe you’ll be able to pick up on something that the girls didn’t hear when they saw the Visitor. We _did_ haul all our equipment here, after all. It’d be a waste not to use it.”

“All right,” I said. “But we should also figure out what to do about dinner if we’re going to stay here all night.”

“George?” Lockwood said.

“I’ll ask Parsingwol about recommendations for takeaway whenever she gets back.”

***

It took Miss Parsingwol a whole hour to gather up our six interviewees, meaning that Lockwood and I spent that time alternatively napping on the plush sofas in Parsingwol’s office, exploring her bookshelves, or sitting and figuring out who would take which interview. Lockwood suggested he take the Housemistress and two of the girls, while I spoke to the eighteen-year-old who first saw the Visitor plus whoever else remained. I agreed, and we both let George bask in the glory of Parsingwol’s bookshelves. He kept murmuring about titles Lockwood and I never heard of, and it sounded like the contents were mostly history books, books about education and teenage girls, and a few of those books that give you creative ideas on how to install your wards against Visitors in aesthetically pleasing manners. Finally, Miss Parsingwol walked back in with five girls behind her, plus an older woman who clearly was the Housemistress; the girls ranged from probably thirteen or so to eighteen, and when they looked at us it was impossible to tell if they were in awe, or if they were just sizing us up.

Miss Parsingwol took care of the scant introductions, telling us we could use the empty office next door for interviews in addition to her own, then lead George off towards the archives. It was four o’clock now, and I had a feeling Parsingwol just wanted to get him over there as quickly as she could before sunset. That was fine by us, and it meant we could start the interviews.

I took the empty office across the hall, relieved to see that the furniture in there was much more plain than the stuff that Parsingwol had in her own office. The desk was simply made from wood with a light finish, the two armchairs were mismatched, and if it wasn’t for the great bay window, it would have felt more like a storage room thanks to the boxes of files and office supplies that littered everywhere else.

The first girl I spoke to was the eighteen-year-old who saw the Visitor first. Or perhaps the better word was felt, as became clear when we spoke. Her story was exactly as Parsingwol had relayed it to us – she was showering, felt something creeping from the corner of the shower, and noticed the lower temperature. When she was younger she had had some sight, but not enough to be agency material. Since she knew the signs of a Visitor and roughly where the direction of the creeping was coming from, she looked over her shoulder just in time to to see some sort of haze before she left the shower. It wasn’t much to go on, but I thanked her for her time and for the information, and she left saying she’d send the next student in.

Student number two was a thirteen-year-old girl named Alyssa whose parents had come from Hong Kong to the UK for job related reasons, and who from a young age had a talent for death glows. That had developed into hearing as well, but her parents were quite intent that she focus on her education and invested their money in private institutions. I ignored the myriad of rude responses to her parents’ decisions about education over the Problem, and instead focused on the important stuff.

“Can you tell me what the Visitor was like when you saw it?”

“Sure,” Alyssa replied. She looked just a little bit excited to actually talk about it. “A bunch of us in the House can see and hear things on different levels. Not agency material or anything, but enough that we were pretty sure we could catch a quick glimpse at the Visitor before anything like ghostlock happened. We brought iron filings with us and some salt, and once everyone in the House was asleep we snuck into the bathroom. The doors don’t lock there in case of an emergency.”

“I see,” I said. “Go on.”

“So, okay, it was me, Greta, Mabel, and Theodora there, waiting in the bathroom. We put down iron filings between the shower area and the rest of the bathroom to keep the Visitor back, we all had iron charms on, and we made a path ringed by iron filings to get out of the bathroom safely if we needed it. I think it was around midnight that things started to get really cold, and our eyes went over to the far corner. The showers are basically stalls that all share the same floor, so there’s no curtain or privacy. Like a gym shower.

“Anyway. Once the temperature started to drop and we all turned towards the far corner, we started to feel something creep in. I think that’s uhm, miasma?”

I nodded in confirmation. “Yes.”

“Miasma started to set in, and then a few minutes later Greta said she was sensing something. Something angry. Around that time I started seeing a death glow – a really strong one – and hearing, well, it sounded like someone was in agony. Mabel and Theodora mostly see things, so they let out some surprised noises, although we were all trying really hard to not let the Visitor know we were a little afraid.”

I knew the rest of the story was _and then after a few more seconds, we ran_ , which meant I only had two major questions left. “Was the Visitor saying anything intelligible? And could you make sense of the Visitor’s clothes?”

Alyssa’s face screwed up in concentration for a few moments before she said, “A man’s voice was apologizing for taking something. I don’t know what the something was, he just said ‘it’ over and over again.

“As for clothes I think you’d have to ask Theodora. Sight’s her thing.”

I nodded. “If you could send her in then, that’d be great.”

Alyssa said she could, got up, and let Theodora in.

Where Alyssa was petite and short, Theodora was taller than me with big, thick limbs. From playing sports, I suspected, rather than just big-boned. She was an almost intimidating presence, and her gruff voice didn’t help at all.

I let her rehash the same account of the Visitor that Alyssa had given me, and gently lead her towards the question of what the apparition looked like.

“The thing was really gruesome. There was blood coming out of all the limbs and trailing behind it, and as it moved all the guy’s flesh just, y’know,” Theodora said with a shudder. “Faded. Eyes became sockets. Muscle started to show. It was just--”

“It was a wraith,” I finished, unhappy to find out that we’d be working with a gruesome-looking type two. “Did you see what it had on?”

 

“It was pretty hard to make the clothes out,” Theodora said briskly. “I could see a cravat of some kind and a hint of a waistcoat, but everything else was y’know,” she shrugged. “No limbs, the torso was kinda on the floor like you’d be if you had injured legs and were trying to use just your arms to drag your body forward. And I couldn’t hear a single thing.”

“Got it,” I said, standing up. “Thank you, that’s all. We’ll be working on clearing the house out tonight, if everything goes well.”

Theodora gave a polite enough goodbye before leaving, and I walked myself across the hall to see where Lockwood was with his interviews. The two girls – Mabel and Greta I suppose – were already gone, and the Housemistress barely looked up when I slipped in. Lockwood kept the interview going while greeting me with a wave, and I sat beside him as he finished up. The Housemistress seemed more rattled than any of the students I had spoken to, all worried and talking about how dreadful everything was that this even happened, and by the time she finished, Lockwood had reassured her no less than ten times in just as many minutes that things would be taken care of very soon. 

Once the Housemistress left, Lockwood turned to me. 

“What’d you find out?”

“Well, it’s a wraith,” I said. “A murder victim who was apologizing for the theft of something. Cravat and a waistcoat, so anywhere between the 17th and 19th centuries. You?”

“That’s about the same stuff I got from Greta and Mabel,” Lockwood replied. “The Housemistress said that the defenses for the house are all still in place as far as she knows, so something’s definitely moved over the past few days in order to let whoever this wraith was into the building.”

“George’ll be pleased that he was right.”

“George’ll also take a while longer to finish up his research. I think we should discuss a rough strategy for tonight while we wait. I’m going to go ask Miss Parsingwol for a sketch of the house, and perhaps to order us something to eat.”

***

Lockwood and I were halfway through the school meals that had been provided for us on behalf of the college when George returned from the archives. He had a few pieces of paper in hand, and the look on his face was the same sort of triumphant one that Lockwood or myself had after we finished off a particularly nasty Visitor. It was a sign that George had found something useful, and hopefully it meant that tonight we could discover the source of the wraith quickly and declare the case done.

“Oh good, they gave us food,” George said. Miss Parsingwol had left earlier in order to avoid being out late, and given us her office key for the evening. All of our entry into the haunted building would be overseen by the Housemistress.

“It isn’t too bad for a school dinner,” Lockwood replied cheerfully. “We got a good idea of the sort of Visitor we’re dealing with. What’d you find?”

George reached for the styrofoam container marked with his name. “You first. This is probably lukewarm by now.”

Lockwood and I very quickly rehashed the story we were able to cobble together from our interviews - someone was brutally murdered over a theft and now we were dealing with a limbless wraith - and as we spoke George nodded between bites of chicken. By the time we had finished explaining everything to him, George had finished his dinner entirely.

“That falls in line with everything I found out,” he said, reaching for the pile of napkins that were on the center of the coffee table. “Although it has nothing to do with the college itself.”

“No?” Lockwood asked.

“Before this area was a college, it was another part of the area of Chelsea that had manor homes. There’s some drawings of what those old places looked like, as well as a map or two of where things once stood on the current grounds. It looks like there was a big house over where the dorm is now. So if there was a murder on the site, then it’s probably from that particular era. You said the girls saw the wraith wearing a cravat and waist coat?”

I nodded in affirmation. “So we definitely know that it’s from the old house that used to be there. But that doesn’t explain the theft or why the Visitor is showing up on the _second_ floor. I mean if anything, it should be on the first floor or the basement.”

“Did you find anything about there being a theft in the house, George?” Lockwood inquired.

George shook his head no. “Nothing. But I didn’t know to look for it either. I have the former owner’s name though; I could always make a trip to the newspaper archive tomorrow and see what I can find. The Chelsea Observer should have some record, since it goes back to the 1600s.”

“Well, if we can’t solve the case tonight then you should definitely go tomorrow.”

“I think we should wait,” George said, his nose scrunching up. “I mean after the Annie Ward case, I would have hoped that you two learned your lesson about--”

“--We have!” I said quickly. “I mean that’s why we’ve sat and done so many interviews today rather than just go right to the house and get this done and over with.”

“Clearly not!” George snapped. “Because here you are, rushing in with only the barest of facts and--”

“Enough,” Lockwood interjected. “This case probably requires a little more research, but it might be best done by seeing the Visitor for ourselves tonight. So,” he continued, standing up. “We’ll do just that. Let’s grab our equipment bags and start to head over.”

***

The Glanlan house was one of those ornate Victorian things, and it stuck out against the faux-medieval stone walls of the nearby buildings. We had already been given the key to the house by the Housemistress, and we all knew that the students who usually lived there were well out of harm’s way. It was just us, our equipment, and the wraith.

Lockwood opened the door for all of us, and we were greeted by a modern foyer with lots of bright, cheerful colours against white walls. It was clean and simple, which contrasted sharply with the fact it housed teenage girls. I knew from living at home that girls at that age were no neater and boys, and vaguely I wondered if the students or the Housemistress had actually put effort into tidying up for us. If that was the case, well, it was a nice gesture.

Once inside, we all moved off to the common room on the first floor. George flipped the lights on so we could see what we were doing, and soon enough equipment was strewn all over the nice sofas and armchairs. Chains, flares, canisters of salt, _everything._ We had agreed to double check our equipment this time around to try and avoid a repeat of what happened at Sheen Road, and as we went through repeating item names at each other and remarking on their condition, well, I felt myself growing impatient. We had done this before we left, and could be making use of our time exploring the house itself rather than repeat ourselves. But I kept the thought to myself, and soon enough we were all suited up and agreed that I’d get a feel for the second floor, while George and Lockwood poked in the basement to see if there was any sign of a source down there from the original manor house that once stood on the property.

The second floor’s corridor was long, and it didn’t take me any time at all to figure out which direction I needed to head in. The minute I took a few steps to the left I felt the temperature drop, which meant the bathroom was further down the hall. I took my rapier out, and began to inch my way down. 

I went past dorm room after dorm room, the names of the residents posted on the door. They were all done in construction paper with fancy lettering, making for a strange contrast between sophisticated and childish. I suppose it made sense, since some of the students here were only eleven years old. But I couldn’t dwell on it too much, because the temperature was rapidly decreasing. 50 degrees down to 40 in the space of just a few doors. I noted a single open doorway on my left, and paused to see what was in it. A common room full of bookshelves greeted me, and it was certainly not a bathroom. So I continued down to the last door at the end of the hallway - the bathroom.

 

Walking over the threshhold, I felt a wave of ice come crashing down on me. I was in the right place. On the floor, I could see a pathway of iron filings leading from the door to around the corner of bathroom stalls, making it clear in terms of where I needed to go next. I took a final glance around the bathroom, and then left it entirely. No one went in for further observation without another agent, which meant waiting outside the bathroom for George and Lockwood.

I didn’t have to wait very long, thankfully. Two minutes after I found myself leaning against the doorway into the common room, they came thundering up the stairs, calling my name. I yelled in response and shined my flashlight in their direction.

“How was the basement?” I asked when they had finished making their way over.

“Boring,” Lockwood sighed.

“There’s no signs of anything down there that could cause a haunting,” George said. “All modern equipment for things like foosball and darts, Lockwood didn’t pick up any death glows, _nothing._ Even if the source was underneath the basement floor, we would have felt it.”

“It might be outside,” I suggested, my eyes moving towards the window of the common room that looked out onto the campus. “Under all the dirt, or under another building entirely.”

“Maybe,” George said heavily. “Or maybe our Visitor’ll give us some clues.”

“We might as well find out,” Lockwood said, puffing his chest out as he looked towards the bathroom door. “Shall we?”

George and I both stepped forward in agreement, and one by one we filed into the bathroom. Our flashlights shone on the iron filings, and we followed the path they laid out past the bathroom stalls and the sinks opposite them, beyond the changing area, and into the showers.

Like the girls had described to me earlier in the day, the showers themselves weren’t separate at all. Instead sixteen stalls clustered in groups of four sat beyond a little retaining wall to ensure that the rest of the bathroom wouldn’t be flooded, and here was where the iron filings ended. Lockwood turned his torch towards the stalls, his face screwed up in concentration.

“Okay, let’s put our chains down around the retaining wall to keep our Visitor locked in. George, can you follow the iron filings here and fill in whatever’s been interrupted? I think this lined escape route could be useful to us. Oh, and put more chains at the end of the path.”

“Got it,” George said, turning his back towards us and starting to walk away.

“Luce,” Lockwood continued, turning towards me. “Can you take some temperature readings while I set the chains up? If we need to change plans because our guest is here earlier than anticipated--”

“Of course.”

Stepping into the stall area, the temperature went down even more. 32 degrees. I pulled my jacket tight around me, keeping one hand on my rapier at all times. As I walked, it became apparent to me that the right-hand side of the stall area was where the Visitor would manifest. I could see my breath cloud before me when I was there, and that was all the information I needed.

“I’ve got a read on where he’ll come out,” I called out. “Do you want me to stay put or--”

“No, get back here and beyond the iron line,” Lockwood responded.

I didn’t need to be told twice. I quickly left the creepy corner, glad for even the slightest bit of warmth returning to me as I stepped back behind the chains. It was safe there.

“Far right,” I said, indicating the direction I had just come from. “It’s just a matter of time now. Is George almost done?”

Lockwood called the question back towards George, only to have George walk right back up to us and inform us that he was quite done, yes. All that was left to do was wait.

Waiting is always the hard part with Visitors, I think. When you have enough information on them in order to anticipate what they’ll do, how they’ll do it, what they’ll look like, a certain sort of anxiety to just get it all done and over with sets in, and it makes the waiting so much worse. Especially when you can’t do anything else, because the minute you’re off your guard is when a Visitor can do the most damage.

We must have been there for over an hour before the Visitor showed up. I could tell because George’s stomach was rumbling the way it always did after he had been up for a late night and we weren’t able to have tea and biscuits before getting down to business. Lockwood was starting to fiddle with his coat and how it hung around his rapier hilt _just_ so, and I was starting to find myself curling and uncurling my toes for the sake of just having something to do.

All at once though, the three of us went on alert, thanks to the creeping miasma that began to overtake the room. Our Visitor was here, and we were all ready for it. Flashlights went off. Rapiers were drawn out. And all three of us stood at the very edge of the iron chains, necks craning around the corner, waiting.

I heard the Visitor before I saw it. Long, drawn out moaning filled the air, soft at first but growing steadily in volume. Lockwood murmured about a trace death glow, and then all at once the wraith appeared.

Just as the students had described to us, the Visitor was nothing more than a limbless torso, dragging itself along the ground as if i’s arms were still powering it forward. Its hair was long and pulled back, but its eyes were nothing but sockets with shriveled up little prunes where the eyes had once been. Blood began to leak out of the limbs almost instantly, and I swear I saw George cover his mouth and look away for a moment. I couldn’t blame him, the thing was grotesque, and as it moved toward across the tile floor, the skin on its face began to shrink, rot, then fall off entirely, leaving patches of exposed muscle and bone.

As it moved, the labored groans became coherent sentences, wracked with sheer agony.

‘“Luce, what’s it saying?”

There was only cool calm in Lockwood’s voice, and after a moment, I gave him a response. “He says _He’s sorry, he didn’t think it had any value._ ”

“What’s the _it_?”

“I’m trying to listen!” 

The visitor only offered me repetition. My ears strained, and out of instinct I took a step back so I could no longer peer around the corner of the stalls. The ghost was drawing too close, and that meant an increased chance of ghostlock. I put my hands on Lockwood’s and George’s shoulders, so they could step back as well.

“ _I didn’t know the money was in there!_ ” the wraith moaned, as it finally inched past the corner. I was all ready to relay the message to the other two, but the spirit’s head turned towards all three of us, and that meant only one thing: Plan F.

Elegantly executing Plan F meant running backwards from a Visitor with rapiers warding the spirit off to ensure a swift and safe escape. Lockwood, if and when present, would be the person facing the ghost as we retreated, where I would be in the middle and George would be out front. In our training sessions it had worked beautifully and now, well. For once something was going just as we had practiced.

I can’t tell you how it felt to see that wraith try and float after us running _parallel_ to the iron filings that had been laid out. But as we were running, the wraith did something none of us had ever seen before: it veered a hard right through one of the toilet stalls, then vanished. We stared at the bathroom, dumbfounded, unsure of what had caught the ghost’s attention in such a manner. 

The silence continued until George said, “My temperature reading is slowly going up.”

I frowned. “That doesn’t explain why it just suddenly left.”

“No,” Lockwood agrees. “It doesn’t. Did it say anything else to you, Luce?”

“It said that it didn’t know the money was in there, wherever _there_ is.”

“There is probably an item,” Lockwood murmured. “So it means we don’t have to look for remains. We have to look for whatever was moved into the house recently and figured it out from there.”

“Which means asking the Housemistress tomorrow,” I said neatly. “Unless there’s another haunting.”

We all know it was unlikely, and as we walked out of the bathroom, our eyes moved towards the other doors that lined the corridor. The item had to be in one of them, and it was wherever the Visitor had disappeared to.

***

We spent the rest of the night in the Glanlan house each taking shifts to check that our Visitor hadn’t returned while the other two of us dozed on the sofas of the main common room. It wasn’t the worst place we had stayed in for an investigation, and the rest of the night passed without so much as a single temperature drop. As the sun rose, I felt the same relief I always feel when working a case, certain that for now, we were all safe from Visitors. Out of instinct I went into the kitchen to make tea, and by the time I was finished, both Lockwood and George had shuffled in.

The tea was consumed in companionable silence, all of us struggling to be alert enough to figure out our next step. It took two cups of English Breakfast tea to get us to that point, but once we were there well, it came together in one of those alarmingly simple ways that we often don’t get to experience.

“So,” Lockwood began, placing the dainty china tea cup we had found in the cupboards down onto the table. “George? Can you go to the newspaper archives today and research the theft?”

George nodded in affirmation. “Sure thing.”

“I’ll talk to Parsingwol whenever she gets in, as I expect she’ll want an update on the situation. Luce, will you come with me?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Should we leave our equipment here for now since we’ll be coming back, or take it with us?”

“Maybe just take stock of what we’re low on, and we can dash back to Portland Row for a few hours and grab what we need. George, how long do you think it’ll take to investigate the archives?”

Slowly, George’s glasses slid down his nose, almost out of protest. “I can’t estimate something like that,” he replied defensively. “Sometimes I find what I’m looking for immediately, other times it can take hours!”

“Can you be here at one and just update us?” Lockwood asked, trying to smooth over George’s ruffled feathers.

“Yeah, sure,” he agreed sullenly. “Do you think they’re going to give us breakfast, since we stayed overnight?”

My stomach growled at the suggestion. “I hope so.”

Our hopes were quickly dashed when Miss Parsingwol knocked on the front door of the house, asking if she could come in and be updated on the case. George took that as his sign to get moving to the archives before they even opened, leaving Lockwood and I to deal with the client.

She took George’s seat at the table, and looked at us both with a poised, hawk-like stare.

“Did you manage to wrap things up?” she asked.

I opened my mouth to say _not yet_ , but Lockwood responded first, making sure his overflowing charm was fully trained on Parsingwol.

“We haven’t finished yet, but we were able to rule a few things out that should put your mind at ease,” Lockwood said, smooth as silk.

The next question came as no surprise. “Such as?”

“Well, we know that this visitor isn’t tied to remains,” I filled in. “So you won’t have to dig up anything in the basement or around the house. It’s just a matter of finding the right item and sending it to the furnaces.”

Parsingwol nodded curtly. “That is a relief to hear. Do you have an idea of what that item might be?”

“No,” Lockwood admitted. “But George is en route to the newspaper archives now in order to research it. It seems that our Visitor was killed over a theft, and it’s likely that whatever he stole is the item we’re looking for. Have any new students moved into the house recently, or any antiques added to the house?”

“There haven’t been any new move-ins, no,” Miss Parsingwol said. “But I can ask the Housemistress about other items. Such things are beyond my purview. Will you both be staying for a while?”

“Er,” I began. “We do need to go home and restock things in case we have to stay for a second night.”

“If the Housemistress is on the grounds, I see no reason we can’t ask her a single question before we head back to Portland Row,” Lockwood countered. “It might save us some time.”

“I can send her over here then,” Parsingwol replied, standing up. “Please give me fifteen minutes to do so.”

We had no other choice but to agree, and in the meantime Lockwood and I moved back to the living room to at least make headway in checking our supplies. As I had suspected, we needed to replace our iron filings, but everything else was intact and perfectly safe. We didn’t really need to go back to Portland Row at all, given how easy it was to buy filings from any corner shop. 

“Looks like we’re good,” I said, just as a knock sounded on the door. “Housemistress?”

“I’ll check,” Lockwood said, going to do just that. But the bright _oh, yes, hello_ I expected didn’t come. Instead Lockwood made a surprised noise, and I poked my head around the corner to see what was going on.

A few girls stood at the edge of the door, some of the ones we interviewed and what must have been friends of theirs, totaling a dozen girls all in uniform. Lockwood was smiling, fielding questions as best he could, responding to “did you see it last night?” with a perfectly polite “yes” and then other questions that came down to “can we come in yet?” with a firmer no.

“Actually,” I said, coming to stand next to Lockwood. “We have a question for you.”

That hushed all of them quickly, and Lockwood shot me a moment’s confused look before he understood precisely where I was planning on going. 

“We think that this visitor’s attached to an item,” I explained. “Was there anything new added to the house before the visitor arrived?”

A soft response of _hmmmm_ s and _uhmmms_ responded, until one of the girls - about my age, I’d say, maybe a hair younger - spoke up. 

“The common room on the second floor got some new books.”

Lockwood’s face lit up.

“If we let you in, could you show us?”

The collective confirmation was all Lockwood needed in order to step aside and let the girls fly up the steps. 

“Go with them,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll wait for the Housemistress and explain to her why we just let a hoard of students upstairs where there’s been a dangerous Visitor.”

“Have fun.”

Lockwood waved me off with that, and I climbed up the stairs after the thundering of a dozen pairs of feet, feeling like I had just escaped a savannah stampede. I made my way down the corridor, watching as the last of the girls made the turn into the common room, and by the time I walked in, there was a pile of books waiting for me.

The wooden shelves that lined the room hadn’t been picked clean, but the pile on one of the study tables that ringed the room was sizeable. Moreover, the books looked properly old, with tattered binding and yellowed pages, the scent of musty paper increasing as I walked over towards the stack.

“This is everything?” I asked.

“Yeah,” came Alyssa’s voice from my immediate right. “Sometimes we get old books to put on the shelves in order to make the place look a little bit nicer when our parents come to visit or prospective students are doing tours.”

I tried not to wrinkle my nose at how ridiculous the mere idea of older books making a place look more serious and stately was. Instead I focused my attention on the books themselves, and the low psychic hum I was beginning to feel from them. It felt like someone playing multiple piano chords at the same time creating a wondrous noise, but there was most certainly one note in there that didn’t belong.

 

It was impossible to ignore all of the girls watching me as I began to run my hands over the books, searching for the one that our Visitor was attached to. A part of me knew that for them, this was all a brand new experience, seeing an agent at work. They might not ever see it again, and they’d want to tell everyone they could about seeing a real agent work against a Visitor who had invaded their home. The rest of me desperately wanted privacy from those eyes, as they were beginning to make me feel as if I was doing a trick in front of a large crowd, rather than my job.

As I started to focus on searching for the right book, everything else became irrelevant. The eyes of the students didn’t matter anymore, not when I could feel a sense of terror, anger, and agony beginning to bubble up as my hand moved to the right side of the table. Tracing my fingers down the spines of each book, it felt like combing through sedimentary layers, down and down until my fingers brushed over a particularly worn looking dark blue spine, whose title had long since faded, but whose embellishments on the leather remained.

I forced myself not to flinch at the overwhelming pain that came shooting up my fingers as I touched the spine. The Visitor’s death had been awful, I could feel every inch of my nerves starting to burn up,, but in front of all these people? I couldn’t be seen as anything but the single bravest agent they had ever encountered. I withdrew my fingers slowly, dragging them on the table as if that would shake the feeling off. 

“There,” I said, picking my head up and forcing a smile. My stomach was upside down. “We’ve got the culprit. We’ll have to get it under some silver and send it right off to the furnaces.”

Almost instantly, the students were starting to shove all the other books off the pile in order to get to the offender, and I had to be quick to tug it away before any of them touched it. They weren’t agents, but they were still sensitive, and me grabbing at that book was perfectly timed, as it was at that moment Lockwood walked in with the Housemistress.

Her mouth was drawn into a tight little _o_ upon seeing the scene in front of her, but I managed to turn towards her and offer a smile as cheerful as Lockwood’s.

“The students helped me find the offending object,” I explained. “I was making sure they were only looking at it instead of grabbing it.”

“I see,” she sniffed. “Girls, we’ll need to speak of this shortly. But thank you for helping Mr Lockwood and Miss Carlyle with this matter.”

It was clear there was chastisement in the Housemistress’ tone, because the girls seemed to shrink in unison. I murmured to Lockwood that he should get the equipment bag so we could tamp down on the emanations pouring out of the book. Lockwood agreed, and was quick to note that we could even stop at the furnaces on the way home and ensure its destruction.

***

Once the book was in our equipment bag and we were all packed up, Lockwood took care of getting the final payment from Miss Parsingwol while I phoned the newspaper archive to ask them to pass a message along to George telling him to simply come home. The librarian on the other end assured me that it’d be done, and so I waited for Lockwood outside of the main building, pleased to have ended a case so quickly.

Lockwood emerged after what seemed like an eternity, but really was just half an hour, his coat buttoned up to fight off the late autumn chill, equipment bag slung over his shoulder.

“Parsingwol said thank you,” he informed me as we began to walk down the steps. “Although she’ll have to impress upon the girls that their parents cannot know that the school slipped up and let a Visitor onto school property.”

“Speaking of,” I said, tilting my head. “How did that book get in there?”

“Donation,” Lockwood explained. “Apparently those older books were on iron shelving, hence the Visitor never getting out. Those common room shelves should have had iron strips installed, but apparently they had gotten all rusty and weren’t replaced.”

“You’d think they would know better than to do that.”

Lockwood shrugged. “It gave us a nice paycheck, so I wouldn’t complain. Does George know to come back to Portland Row?”

“The librarian said she’d pass the info along,” I replied. “He’ll be annoyed that we went on without him.”

“Probably,” Lockwood agreed. “But it just goes to prove that sometimes the research is over the top and not strictly needed for simple cases.”

I laughed, low and soft. “You can tell him that.”

***

We took the tube over to the Fittes furnaces in Clerkenwell, and from there Lockwood and I headed home, struggling not to fall asleep on each other as we rode back to Portland Row. Grey skies shined down on us as we walked from the station to the home of Lockwood and Co. Once inside Lockwood said that he was going to ring up Arif’s for donuts. I had no issue with that at all, as ten o’clock seemed like perfect donut time to me.

I hauled our equipment bags downstairs while Lockwood took care of the order. I unpacked slowly, leaving out the empty jars for iron filings so we wouldn’t forget to refill them, and then headed upstairs just in time to see Lockwood close the door, box of donuts in hand. We both shuffled into the kitchen, ate two donuts along with more tea, and then spent the rest of the late morning lazing around the house. Lockwood picked through a few new gossip magazines, and I busied myself with reading another of the cheap mystery novels that seemed to appear whenever I needed one.

One o’clock came and went. Every so often I could see Lockwood’s head pick up and look over the sofa I was sitting on to make sure George knew to come back home rather than return to the college - just in case the librarian hadn’t done as we asked. George shuffled in at two o’clock, red-faced and muttering about the wind picking up outside, only to flop into the nearest armchair.

“Don’t tell me you went back to Chelsea,” Lockwood said, folding up his magazine and moving it to the arm of the chair.

“Oh, no, I got the message,” George replied. He was annoyed; there was no mistaking that tone of voice. “I can’t believe you two went on to finish without me though.”

“It wasn’t like we did it on purpose,” I said, dog-earing my book before closing it. “The students rushed us along.”

George sniffed. “Well, next time, wait for me, yeah? I really do enjoy looking at that stuff before it gets destroyed.”

I was all ready to snap that we couldn’t help it if the furnace was a practical step and did George want a repeat of what I had done with Annie Ward’s locket, but Lockwood was quick to offer calmer words. 

“We’ll try, unless it’s a really dangerous item.” He paused, then asked, “Did you end up finding anything about our wraith?”

“I did, actually,” George said. “But I had to go to the national archives proper, rather than the newspaper archives.”

I could feel my eyes rolling, knowing George was about to go on a tangent about research. However, he reigned himself in, if only because he knew Lockwood and me too well.

“The newspaper articles for the Chelsea Observer mentioned a missing servant named Giles Ford who worked for a merchant named Henry Grant, who owned a portion of the land that the Chelsea Ladies College sits on today. There weren’t any follow-ups because he was a servant, but the National Archives had Grant’s journals.”

“And Grant was responsible for the wraith that once was Giles Ford, right?” I asked.

“Mmhmm,” George nodded. “Grant was a merchant in the late 17th into the 18th century, and made a lot of money in trading imports. Sugar, spices, and wine mostly, and that could be worth its weight in _gold._ Ford was suspected of stealing money from Grant’s enterprises, because the weight of some shipments was always off, by very small increments. It turns out that Ford was skimming very small fractions of things and selling them at premium prices, and used a book to hide his own records of the transactions. Coded transactions, mind you, but still written down transactions.”

Lockwood nodded. “And when Grant found out he was simply so mad--”

“--He wasn’t just mad,” George said. “One of the shipments had some disease from the colonies on it, and selling the sugar from it caused a minor outbreak. A few people died, and Grant was being held responsible. Apparently when he found out about the source of the problem--”

“--He grabbed the axe and murdered Ford in a truly gruesome fashion,” I finished. “And Ford was attached to that book because it brought him extra money, as well as evidence of his crimes.”

“And as for why Ford appeared?” George looked to Lockwood and I quizzically.

“Donated books without the proper protection,” we said together.

George didn’t look surprised at all. “That’d do it.”

“There’s some donuts from Arif’s in the kitchen,” Lockwood added. “We made sure to save you some. They’re next to the skull.”

“And I’ll expect a few messages from new clients on the phone,” George said. “Call them all back tomorrow?”

“Definitely.”

With that, George got up to explore his donut options, and the house settled down for the rest of the day. I returned to my novel, pleased that we had finished the case so quickly and without any disasters beyond George being slightly annoyed at us. 

It meant, however, that the next case would be anything but straightforward. But at least we could lay claim to solving the case of the Chelsea Ladies’ College Wraith.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide, Novembersmith! When I got your request I immediately ran to my copy of the books to search out some of the cases Lucy names off hand but never gets into, and the wraith one stuck out to me in particular! I had a lot of fun writing this and trying not only to mimic Stroud's style, but also brush against some of the class stuff Lucy always seems to have in the back of her head as she narrates. I hope that you like it!
> 
> As always, my thanks to P.R. to the beta, and to E. for help explaining the British education system to me further. Chelsea Ladies College is heavily based on [Cheltenham Ladies' College](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cheltenham_Ladies%27_College)!


End file.
